


and all the king's men

by nevernevergirl



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, M/M, Post-Canon, post trk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 09:52:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7930192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevernevergirl/pseuds/nevernevergirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tonight, they found Glendower. Tonight, the world fell apart. Tonight, he died and lived again.</p><p>Gansey tries to make sense of the aftermath. Post-TRK. Blue/Gansey, background Adam/Ronan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and all the king's men

Blue's stitches need to be redone.

It's absurd and urgent all at once. They'd all poured out of the BMW once they'd reached Fox Way, a grimy, disoriented mess, so absorbed by the awful, wonderful magic of it all that it that being met with horrified motherly concern is jarring, to say the least.

Gansey takes a step outside of himself, trying to see them more objectively. Blood caked over Blue's eye horror-movie-style, and down Adam's cheekbone as if it had cut itself on its own sharpness. Black and blue and purple blooming above the tendrils of Ronan's tattoo.

(He can't see himself, or: is afraid to.)

Calla marches back into the house purposefully as Maura takes inventory; when she returns, her arms are full of practicalities: towels and bandages and blankets and tarot cards and bags of unpleasant tea.

"Well," Maura says, herding Blue and Gansey into the shared Fox Way car as Calla shuffled the others back into the BMW. "Let's get you all to the ER. This'll be a long night."

***

Adam's face had been looked at, but the cuts were too shallow to need stitches. Ronan's bruises look brutal, and Adam looks pale and drained under the thick gauze on his cheek. They curl into each other, Adam's head against Ronan's shoulder like he's too tired to second guess his place for once, Ronan's fingers twisting in Adam's hair.

Gansey thinks of Humpty Dumpty. All the king's horses, all the king's men. Parrish and Lynch, put back together again.

That's not quite right, he knows; he's the patchwork one, put back together by his magicians. There'd been no use for an examination with him, no scan that could tell if all the pieces lined back up. He sits with Calla, cross legged on the floor of the waiting room with cards spread out in front of him. His own check up.

His head hurts, vaguely, and he wants to know if Ronan's called his brother yet-- or if Adam's called Declan, at least, and he'd really, really like to see Blue.

***

It is a long night.

Blue's stitches are neatly done, once again, but her skin is red and angry. Adam looks like he wants to apologize, but is either sensible or tired enough to leave it til morning. Ronan gives her a high five that is simultaneously half-hearted and wholly relieved.

Gansey offers her the sweater he'd borrowed from Henry. Blue shudders and shakes her head and Gansey runs his fingers through the now-limp spikes of her hair instead.

"It'll heal," she says, when his fingers lightly trace the puffy red skin. He recognizes something familiar in it, and thinks it might have been a feeling he had, once. Blue shifts, gathering his face in her cupped hands, looking him over solemnly.

"How do you feel?"

"Like I've healed," he echoes, half a joke. Blue scowls.

"Don't," she says, "Be _raven_ about this."

"Calla couldn't find anything wrong."

"That's not what I asked."

"I know," he sighs. "I feel like it'll heal," he says, and it's not a joke this time.

"Alright."

She wraps her fingers around his, and he knows it to be true.

***

"It's okay. I couldn't sleep, anyway."

Adam's voice is low and rough and accented, shaped by the earth, colored in with warm Henrietta dirt-- it brings him back to his body. Or makes him stop jostling around in it so much, anyway. Blue murmurs an apology that sounds like the sky--or, rather: he registers her murmuring. It must have happened the other way around-- Blue, then Adam. That would make more sense.

He's not sure he's built for making sense anymore.

He takes a careful inventory of reality to attempt to put things back in order. They are all in the phone/sewing/cat room of 300 Fox Way. He is in the center of a haphazardly constructed pillow-blanket bed. Blue is on his right, where she has been all night and not nearly long enough; her hand clasps his, palm against palm so their lifelines match up. His back is pressed against the well-loved couch, where Ronan is curled up with his dream orphan--Gansey can feel his gaze on the back of his head. Henry, stretched out by his feet where he is just in reach if it came to that sort of thing, rolls over onto his side, his gaze wary and steady all at once. Adam, previously curled up in a sleeping bag just a foot or so away, sits up and shifts closer, lining their limbs up: this is the missing piece he needs to put it all in _perspective_ , because Adam sleeps like the dead, in most cases.

Tonight is not most cases. Tonight, they found Glendower. Tonight, the world fell apart. Tonight, he died and lived again.

It's no longer tonight, he muses--probably closer to morning. And he's just had a panic attack. Yes. That's right. That would account for everyone awake and staring at him, their gazes heavy with concern and laced with hesitance.

"It's okay," he says, careful with the words--testing them. His voice sounds like it's _apart_ from him, and it feels both new and expected.

"Don't," Blue narrows her eyes as her fingernails lightly dig crescent moons into his skin.

"Idiot," Adam agrees, arm pressed warmly against his own. He's hesitant with his hand, but he wraps his fingers loosely around Gansey's wrist all the same.

"Asshole," Ronan adds, sliding down from the couch with the sort of thud that requires effort. He reaches over, adjusting a blanket over dream-orphan-girl-goat-thing's shoulder, then slumps into their huddled mass on Adam's other side.

Henry raises his eyebrows. "Remind me not to die," he says, slowly, a wide smile spreading across his face. "This family is incredibly volatile."

Blue barks a low, throaty laugh that's half sob half wonderful and Adam rolls his eyes as his grip tightens to something more confident, and Ronan mutters a _Jesus Mary._ Gansey's heart beats wildly in something he recognizes as the rhythm of them all. The pulse of magic.

His soul settles and he is so, so still.

***

( _and then they lived, happily ever after_.)

“Pull over.  Let me drive for awhile.”

It wasn't like he'd been zoning out, because that would have been _actual_ irresponsibility-- beyond the leeway he'd begun to grant himself as of late, _but_ they were possibly somewhere in the middle of Montana and definitely in the middle of the night, which, in his defense, creates an _aura_ , if you will, a _zone of tranquility._

All this to say, Blue's voice materializing out of the ether startles the shit out of him enough to provoke a _tiny_ jump in the driver seat, which, in turn, provokes the tiniest of smug smirks on her face.

"I'm alright, Jane," he says, pleasantly-- having regained his momentarily displaced senses. "I've only been driving a few hours."

Blue rolls her eyes. His stomach flips in a familiar way.

"I know you're alright. I want to drive," she shrugs. "It's late and the highway's empty. I might as well get some practice in."

It's true that Blue has yet to find that sweet spot in between "someone's great-grandmother" and "fear for your life," but it's not for a lack of trying. He concedes with a nod as he pulls over on the shoulder, sparing a quick glance in the backseat where Henry's curled up, dead asleep. He marvels, briefly, over the depth of trust and ease and comfort necessary to allow one to fall asleep in the back of a car that shouldn't exist miles away from anything solidly rooted in loud existence.

He's done it himself several times now, which is a whole _other_ marvel, he supposes.

He rounds the hood of the car to slip into the passenger side as Blue climbs over the console triumphantly.

"Buckle up," she says, cheerfully, and he (very tactfully, he thinks) refrains from making a joke re: having already died by her hand once.

She shifts into gear and back onto the highway in what isn't an _entirely_ smooth action, but it isn't joltingly unpleasant, either. She's got the seat pushed up almost as far as it'll go, and her hair's falling out of its bobby pins. It's two in the morning, and he loves her more than he can stand.

He doesn't place his hand over hers on the gearshift. She knows what she's doing, and she'd find it more pedantic than romantic, anyway. He does ghost his fingers across the soft skin stretched against her inner wrist. She sighs almost imperceptibly, and his skin thrums over veins flowing with blood running calmly.

Everything is so quiet. Blue's sighs, the engine-less Camaro, Henry's soft snores in the back seat. The future stretches out in front of them in vast swathes of Montana nothing and Richard Campbell Gansey the Third is _still_.

She asks to drive and knows he'll say yes. There's comfort in the bendable boundary--him in the driver seat, then her. There's a soothing balm in the curve of her hands on the steering wheel. Her Camaro shaped like his, her wrist and his fingers, their lives tangled together. Her trusts and her presumptions and her her her.

He isn’t a king. He is a boy in love with a girl and a car and more improbable things than he can grasp, and he is so alive.

**Author's Note:**

> ok, i've been lurking on the edges of this fandom since, like. tdt came out, and finally got around to actually writing some things, so. hi. [ i'm on tumblr here if anyone wants to yell about raven bastards.](http://lillypotters.tumblr.com)


End file.
